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POLITICO 44

For all the posturing and hype surrounding the Finance Committee health care reform bill, there was little real suspense inside Hart 216 on Tuesday.

Democrats criticized the absence of a public insurance option. Republicans described the legislation as a “stunning assault on liberty” and signaled that all of them — except maybe Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe — are probably voting no.

But it was clear from the start that the markup of Chairman Max Baucus’s bill wasn’t going to be the final word on anything in the health reform debate — as there were few hints that a bloc of about five liberal senators on the committee planned to make the Finance Committee their last stand.

They know their ability to shape the bill to their liking improves dramatically after it leaves the Finance Committee, so they are pushing for as many changes as possible, and then are likely to let it go.

The White House and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) simply want to get a bill through the committee — and Democrats indicated Tuesday in their opening statements that they are largely willing to comply, despite some serious reservations.

Even the leading voice for a public option, Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) softened the edges of his criticism, tempering concerns about the bill with praise for Baucus, describing him as “our Gen. Eisenhower.”

“On Finance, because Democrats have the majority, this means no Democrat is willing to be labeled as the senator who killed health reform,” said William Pierce, a senior vice president with APCO Worldwide, which represents health care clients. “The suspense of this markup is more about what the final bill will look like, who will prevail, who will win, who will lose.”

Baucus released a modified bill Tuesday that began to answer some of those questions. The new document, in many ways, read like a road map to winning votes.

Baucus made a series of concessions to Democrats who could have withheld their vote had the changes not been made, and he accepted part or all of 10 amendments from Snowe, a key swing vote.

The chairman sought to win Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) by allowing some seniors enrolled in privately run Medicare Advantage plans to keep the same coverage.

Baucus tried to shore up support from Rockefeller and Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) by altering the excise tax on insurers that offer high-end plans. He raised the threshold at which the tax would kick in for high-risk professionals, such as firefighters and coal miners, and for senior citizens.

But hoping to maintain the health policy aim of the tax — which is to force consumers to choose cheaper plans that discourage excess health care spending — Baucus did not raise the tax threshold for everyone. This likely disappointed Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who had hoped for the higher threshold, but satisfied deficit hawks such as Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).

Baucus looked for the backing of Snowe and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) by cutting in half the penalty on individuals who do not buy insurance — from $3,800 to $1,900 for a family earning about $66,000 or more per year.

He aimed for Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and others with a proposal to drop the cap on the amount that lower-income individuals would pay in premiums from 13 percent to 12 percent of their annual income. This brought the Baucus bill in line with the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee bill and the House bills — which liberals have said they prefer. But progressives such as Menendez are likely to push for an even lower cap.

“I appreciate his going down from 13 to 12 percent,” Stabenow said during a break in the markup. “But I believe that you need to continue to work on it.”

“The framework of it is very, very good: prevention, insurance reform, all of the delivery changes are really important,” Stabenow added. “I think that there will be some things that will need to be improved upon. I think it will be done within the current framework of the bill."

The following link to The Center for Responsive Politics website, www.opensecrets.org, lists the massive campaign contributions that Senator Max Baucus receives from the health insurance industry, more than any other Senator or Reprsentative, Democrat or Republican, in the House or Senate. ://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cid=N00004643&cycle=2010&type=C&newMem=N&recs=100

Blue Cross/Blue Shield, United Health Group, and Aetna are all top contributors. See the rest.

Is there any doubt as to who wants us to have mandatory private health insurance that would cost us 12 percent of our incomes as well as add to administrative costs of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services? These administrative costs will include but not be limited to covering the financing of the following : enforcing the penalty for failure of taxpayers to buy private health insurance, overseeing the underwriting of mandatory private policies that discriminate on the basis of such risk factors as age and poviding an apparatus for federal enforcement of managed care among federally regulated healthcare insurers,

By giving birtth to this bill, Baucus called his plan "healthcare reform." That's like coming up with a Frankenstein monster and calling it a baby.

Turn around the list of costs the Finance Committe bill would grenerate into a list of policies that the Democrats dislike:

Paying a tax penalty enforced by the IRS because you can't afford to pay 12 percent of your income on mandatory private health insurance. Obama said he was going to have a low-cost health plan.

Being disciminated against on the basis of age for the costs you pay for a mandatory health insurance policy. Obama promised that there would be no disciriminating on the basis of pre-existing physical conditions. Age, Mr. Obama, is a pre-existing condition and like any other, we can't do much about it.

Being told that your insurance policy does not cover this or that because private insurers will let the federal government's inadequate regulatory and oversight apparatus rather than the courts become the decisionmaker in denial of coverage cases. Insurance companies will dignify and memorialize the terms of private policies that deny coverage as well as those imposed by government cost cutters into federal law. Those with the greates expertise in denying coverage will comment in and influence rulemakings pertaining to denial of coverage. These commentators will come from the private insurance industry.

The following link to The Center for Responsive Politics website, www.opensecrets.org, lists the massive campaign contributions that Senator Max Baucus receives from the health insurance industry, more than any other Senator or Representative, Democrat or Republican, in the House or Senate.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pol... /> Blue Cross/Blue Shield, United Health Group, and Aetna are all top contributors. See the rest. This bill will provide all the benefits and continue the good health of Max Baucus for Senate.

Has it escaped anyone's attention that Democrats are kissing Olympia Snow's ring to get one Republican's support so they can claim this is a bipartisan bill and then cram it down the unwilling throat of the American public by ignoring hundreds of years of rules and using "reconciliation".

This bill will be marked up with hundreds of earmark bribes and changes that will increase the cost of a measure that already adds $900 billion to the deficit with the kindest of estimates, steals $500 billion form Medicare Advantage and will end up adding additional hundreds of billions in cost.

Real available reforms that can save money are rejected and only costly programs that cannot help are favored....Geez, it sounds like carbon taxes for healthcare.

Obviously the goal is to ditch the constitutional republic and replace it with a monarchy, or at least a democratically elected monarch. If these people want to go back to Henry VIII, I'm sure what is coming next is the execution of those that disagree for "treason".

One good thing about this bill is that maybe for the first time many Americans are payng attention to how a bill is produced. It really is like watching sausage being made. I couldn't understand why so many people were up in arms about the entire 1000 pages not being read by their representatives and having a cow about some of the things in the bill. None of that was even close to being final and by the time the actual health care reform bill comes to a vote it won't look anything like it did in the beginning. I am curious at to how so many people get through high school without knowing how legistlation works.

What I see are poison pills. They are poisoning the well. This cannot pass, there is no support for this, it's a form of political suicide and they are adding this stuff to ensure it will fail. If Obama were to even consider signing on to this he'd break every campaign promise and malign almost every American in the country and assure his loss of both houses of congress and perhaps even face impeachment. This is laughable...a full fledged dog and pony show replete with clowns.

Baucus estimated the cost of the bill after his changes push the price tag up to $900 billion, from $856 billion.

“If we can do more affordability, fine. We added $45 to $50 billon roughly, so it’s more affordable than the mark,” Baucus told reporters.

After reading that quote it occurred to me that my definition of affordable versus that of Congress is going to create a major impasse for me.

Oh well, we can just punish those old useless seniors and take away their Medicare and Social Security benefits. After all, it is their fault that this has become such a mess, they were all supposed to just die at 65 like we planned.

The President and Congress needs to examine how a future corrupt and greedy President and Congress could take advantage of this health care plan and turn it into a money-making scheme, or a way to take away people's freedoms.

I may sound paranoid, but if the President and Congress does not think about this possibility, then they are harming the American people and setting us up for disastrous consequences.

How do we know that in the future, a President and Congress could not get together with the health care industry and price-gouge, so that Americans were paying a huge amount of their wages, simply to get health care?

And, of course, it would be required, if you were an American citizen. So there would be no choice, as of to pay a steep amount. If you did not pay, you would be thrown into jail. Or they make Americans work "for the govt. until we could pay off our debt," thus forcing Americans into slavery, as indentured servants.

What would prevent this from happening? So far, I don't see anything.

This health care plan could be the end of everything Americans have fought and died for.

The President and Congress needs to examine how a future corrupt and greedy President and Congress could take advantage of this health care plan and turn it into a money-making scheme, or a way to take away people's freedoms.

I may sound paranoid, but if the President and Congress does not think about this possibility, then they are harming the American people and setting us up for disastrous consequences.

How do we know that in the future, a President and Congress could not get together with the health care industry and price-gouge, so that Americans were paying a huge amount of their wages, simply to get health care?

And, of course, it would be required, if you were an American citizen. So there would be no choice, as of to pay a steep amount. If you did not pay, you would be thrown into jail. Or they make Americans work "for the govt. until we could pay off our debt," thus forcing Americans into slavery, as indentured servants.

What would prevent this from happening? So far, I don't see anything.

This health care plan could be the end of everything Americans have fought and died for.

Yes, we're currently paying all sorts of penalties already because of the uninsured.

We pay when all those Americans go bankrupt because they don't have health insurance or had a cap on it. We pay for the *huge* amount of emergency services used by the uninsured which cost several times what normal visits cost. We lose out when people die early and can't contribute to society as much as they could have.

Getting everyone insured has real fiscal benefits. The question is whether they outweigh the costs.